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Buying Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or Azure direct feels like the simpler choice, until you need support or get locked out of your own tenant.
In this Playbook, Max Clark breaks down what a Cloud Solution Provider (a CSP) actually does between you and the platform: faster support and escalation, help recovering a locked tenant, engineering and migration support, and access to vendor funding you can't reach on your own, usually at little or no added cost.
If you're deciding whether to buy direct or through a CSP, or renewing that decision without ever having checked it, this one's for you.
The Playbook
- (00:00) - The cold open
- (00:51) - What a CSP actually is
- (01:29) - Why Microsoft and Google aren't built to handle support directly
- (01:55) - Where a CSP actually sits between you and the platform
- (02:24) - The market development and incentive funds vendors push through CSPs
- (03:19) - The dedicated admin account problem most companies skip
- (04:17) - The real causes of a tenant lockout
- (05:14) - How being a sub of the CSP changes your escalation path
- (06:11) - The engineering, migration, and configuration work a CSP's own staff can do
- (06:38) - Why CSPs range from pure billing pass throughs to full service providers
- (07:03) - Tier zero versus tier one support
- (08:26) - The difference between support built for end users and support built for admins
- (09:25) - Why CSPs get paid through the platform's margin
- (10:17) - Max's bottom line: why the CSP relationship is worth having almost every time
About Signed
Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format, 10 to 15 minutes, one trigger, one specific play. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If the trigger in today's Playbook is one you're facing right now, book an intro call at itbroker.com. We help buyers make the right call the first time. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom
Full Transcript
Creators and Guests
What is Signed?
The IT market is built for sellers, not buyers.
That's why 80% of tech buyers regret their last major purchase. Deals take longer than they should. Teams get locked into platforms that don't fit, contracts they can't escape, and vendors they wouldn't choose again. The pitches, demos, and analyst reports are built to close deals, not help buyers make the right one.
Signed is the podcast for the buyers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, talks with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals — the ones who can explain what actually determined whether the deal worked.
Plus weekly Playbooks breaking down the moments that matter most: renewals, M&A, compliance mandates, office moves, budget cuts, and the specific plays that separate buyers who get it right from those who regret it.
If you're responsible for choosing, negotiating, or living with the consequences of enterprise technology, this show is for you.
New episodes weekly. An ITBroker.com podcast.
Max Clark (00:00)
there's very painful examples
Max Clark (00:01)
of companies getting
Max Clark (00:03)
locked out of their tenant.
Max Clark (00:05)
And there's lots of different
Max Clark (00:06)
ways that this happens.
Max Clark (00:06)
This could be, you know,
Max Clark (00:08)
an automated system.
Max Clark (00:09)
could be abuse,
Max Clark (00:10)
It could be billing,
Max Clark (00:10)
It could be password resets.
Max Clark (00:12)
You could be a phishing attack
Max Clark (00:13)
could be all sorts of different things
Max Clark (00:15)
that result in losing access
Max Clark (00:18)
to your tenant, to your account.
Max Clark (00:20)
Now, if that happens to you,
Max Clark (00:22)
and you're dealing direct
Max Clark (00:23)
with these companies,
Max Clark (00:23)
you now have to go and interact with their support
Max Clark (00:26)
infrastructure directly.
Max Clark (00:28)
So immediately,
Max Clark (00:29)
24 to 48 hour turnarounds
Max Clark (00:30)
in most cases.
Max Clark (00:31)
And guess what else?
Max Clark (00:32)
A lot of times,
Max Clark (00:33)
their support infrastructure
Max Clark (00:34)
is gated behind the sign-in
Max Clark (00:35)
to the admin interface.
Max Clark (00:36)
If you don't have access
Max Clark (00:37)
to the admin interface,
Max Clark (00:38)
you can't open tickets to authenticate
Max Clark (00:40)
that you are, who you say you are
Max Clark (00:41)
and that they need to help you.
Max Clark (00:43)
This is just one of those
Max Clark (00:44)
problems where
Max Clark (00:46)
Until you've experienced it
Max Clark (00:47)
firsthand
Max Clark (00:47)
and then you're in the middle of it. It's insane. So
Max Clark (00:51)
The IT market is built for sellers. Playbooks are for buyers. This is signed. I'm Max Clark from itbroker.com. Today's topic, CSPs. No fluff and off the cuff. Here we go.
Max Clark (01:11)
First off, what is a CSP? CSP is a cloud service provider. CSPs became popularized as things moved into the cloud, right? So we couldn't call them MSPs anymore. So everybody wanted to be called CSPs because it creates market differentiation. Now,
Max Clark (01:29)
Fast forward, CSPs now, in my opinion, are massively important and essential for the ecosystem as a whole. And why is this? Well, first off, organizations like Microsoft and Google are just not equipped to handle support. They were never designed for support. They don't have support. If you've ever tried to interact with either of them for support, you will very quickly understand why you do not want to talk to them for support. So CSPs within,
Max Clark (01:55)
Google and Microsoft and Amazon's ecosystem and frankly now all the big tech companies environments, CSPs serve a support function and feature function, right? So if you think about it, if you sit here and tech companies here, the CSPs right in between and they do a few different things for you, right? So licensing and billing will flow through the CSP in many cases. CSPs will have access to market development funds, to
Max Clark (02:24)
program funds, right? So what I mean by this? if a tech company wants to push a new product into the market, they will incentivize via their CSPs incentive funds to go and push that product or service out. This is free money for you that is not available to you if you're trying to deal with direct right? So this is a perfect example of where direct is not not better. Direct in this case, you're leaving lots of money on the table.
Max Clark (02:52)
Because CSPs can tap into all these incentive funds and whether that's market development funds, migration funds, development, I mean, whatever you want to call it, whatever it's called, right? There is free money that's coming out of a different column, you know, on a spreadsheet for these companies, right? Can you go and can you get product discounted from you know, your sales cycle? Probably not. Can you go over to the other side to another marketing has some initiative where they need to get X happen and, and Y penetration and Z deployed.
Max Clark (03:19)
Absolutely marketing can spend their budget to give you discounts or to give you professional services through your CSP to make it happen massively important. Okay, another thing you get out of CSPs that people don't recognize or realize Unfortunately, it's very common. We'll just we'll use the productivity example. So Google workspace and Microsoft 365 It's very common for companies to have Administration internally. So you you know if you're doing this correctly
Max Clark (03:46)
You're going to have two dedicated admin accounts. They're going to have their own credentials. They're not used for anything except administration. if you want to do any admin, you have to sign out of your account. have to sign into the admin account and do work. By the way, that's a drag. So people don't do it. It's also if you're on the smaller sides and you're counting licenses really closely, spending money for licenses that are only used for admin. Some people don't like doing that. So they also don't do it. What else happens? People don't even realize this should be happening.
Max Clark (04:17)
Now there are very, there's very painful examples of companies getting locked out of their tenant. And there's lots of different ways that this happens. This could be, you know, an automated system. could be abuse, It could be billing, It could be password resets. You could be a phishing attack could be all sorts of different things that result in losing access to your tenant, to your account. Now, if that happens to you,
Max Clark (04:45)
and you're dealing direct with these companies, you now have to go and interact with their support infrastructure directly. So immediately, 24 to 48 hour turnarounds in most cases. And guess what else? A lot of times, their support infrastructure is gated behind the sign-in to the admin interface. If you don't have access to the admin interface, you can't open tickets to authenticate that you are, who you say you are and that they need to help you. This is just one of those those problems where
Max Clark (05:14)
Until you've experienced it firsthand like you know you and then you're in the middle of it. It's insane. So What happens with a CSP? Well because you now if you think about it from like a hierarchy standpoint You are now a sub of the CSP that CSP hacks access To do support for you on your behalf now the CSP knows who you are You have an escalation path that goes to the CSP first and then goes upstream
Max Clark (05:42)
So most things get deflected to the CSP and the CSP has access to do things for you. So in the account lockout scenario, they can get you back in. They can get you back in a lot faster, a lot faster, than trying to go direct with an underlying tech company. The CSP by nature of being a CSP has to have engineering on, you know, as part of their staff. They are going to be able to
Max Clark (06:11)
Migrate you configure you support you make changes a lot of this goes into the CSP and the CSP is going to do a lot faster for you Than again having a direct relationship and depending on that direct relationship The CSP also has dedicated escalation that goes to a much higher tier And again think about it if you're calling in in your direct where you start in the support ticket queue you start all the way at the bottom and then you have to fight your way up into
Max Clark (06:38)
you know, whatever tier and person that actually understands what they're doing, a CSP gets to skip a lot of those steps because their support is much higher. Now, CSPs are going to have different personalities. They're going to have different value propositions. You know, you're going to find CSPs that are just pure billing pass throughs. You're going to see CSPs that actually do.
Max Clark (07:03)
certain segments. mean, if you look at some of these platforms now that have hundreds of unique services, they might specialize in one or a segment, for instance. And you're also, we work with CSPs that extend support. Now, support's always an interesting one. And again, sticking with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, people will express this as tier one support. And I encourage you to think about it more as tier zero support.
Max Clark (07:33)
your really most basic deflections from what your help desk is going to mean for users and application support. I cannot log in, I need a password reset, this application isn't loading. Stuff that is incredibly frustrating and poor experiences for your user base.
Max Clark (07:56)
But there is going to be a level of sophistication when you're looking at a CSP for end user support of what they can and cannot do for you and what you should expect them to be able to do and do for you. There is also going to be a big line between whether or not that CSP is geared up to do end user support or do they exist to do administrative support. So your internal admins have a support path. How do I configure this? How do I deploy this? I don't understand what this means. Why is this not working properly? How do we fix this problem?
Max Clark (08:26)
the CSP becomes support for your technical staff in many cases. And again, some will support and give you what we call tier one support for end users. But in reality, again, if you want to be successful with this, the majority of CSPs out there on the market, think of that CSP as tier zero support, the absolute most basic end user support. So then in that situation, you'd see a support path or maybe
Max Clark (08:55)
you have end users dialing in or calling or interacting with an email queue or whatever actually it is that can get deflected to that CSP. And then that CSP is going to pass things back to you. And then you can escalate to a different team within that CSP. This is very broad example without getting into a specific use case or a specific platform. But hopefully this helps kick the juices going and give you some ideas.
Max Clark (09:25)
margin again, CSPs get paid by the underlying platform, right? So the platform is taking and producing margin margin out of what you're paying to pay the CSP. So CSPs are not 99 % of the time not inflating your price. You're getting value for nothing by using that CSP.
Max Clark (09:48)
And then depending on your size and scale, that CSP maybe is gonna give you that tier zero support for free. The administrative support comes by, it comes with the CSP doing your billing. When you start talking about hyperscale platforms and cloud platforms, they're gonna give you some sort of, FinOps support on top of that typically. These are all value adds that the CSP is going to layer on to help you utilize the platform better and to help the CSP.
Max Clark (10:17)
grow your business with whatever platform you're on. is, they want you to be successful. Your success means their success. know, moral of the story, explain it like I'm five, too long, didn't read, whatever you want to say. CSPs are great. You should absolutely be using one. You can get them for free. Almost 100 % of the time, they're going to provide value to you. They're going to give you capabilities you don't currently have. They're going to give you access on many cases to funding for free, right? Free money, go ahead and take it.
Max Clark (10:46)
You know, so not only is a CSP not going to cost you anything a lot of times they're going to pay for themselves by getting you access to money and funding that you wouldn't otherwise have. So that's the playbook. More is available at itbroker.com podcast. And if you're in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, you can book an intro called itbroker.com and buy tech without regret. I'm Max Clark. See you on the next one.